It was a paper-wrapped birthday candle that wrecked me.
Last week, my mother — my rock, my True North, the strongest woman I have ever known — passed away. She was 91.
After she passed, my sister and I went to her house to get some photos for visitation, and took the opportunity to look at some things that she never let us look at before. There was an ancient cookie jar, a creamer set that looks like happy cows, just some knick knacks that weren’t for “the children” — the youngest now being 47.
Inside one of the cows, I found a very old birthday candle. And I started to cry. It was so Mom.
Ever the practical woman, she threw nothing away if there was a chance it could be used again. Who knows how long that candle had been there. It hadn’t been used, but it was always nearby, ready at a moment’s notice to serve it’s happy purpose. And it had waited for at least 40 years, by my estimation.
We didn’t find anything valuable by most people’s standards, but that cookie jar was filled with secrets. I’m not talking about “guess who did what to whom and when” kind of secrets. I’m talking about plastic harmonicas that Mom had taken away when she couldn’t stand our musical serenades any longer. Projects from Vacation Bible School, marbles that we didn’t pick up the 57,396 times she told us to, and at least two Oscar Mayer Weenie whistles.
One thing that we didn’t find — it probably met its end decades ago — was this neat doll where you would squeeze its arms, legs and body in a certain order and it would wheeze out the tune to Mary Had a Little Lamb. Until my younger brother discovered that if you jumped on it from the couch, it made a racket that sounded like cats fighting inside a tuba.
Wow what my mother went through with 15 children!
The one true treasure left for us to explore was the photos — so many photos. My sister and I gathered a “goodly number,” as my mother would have said, and “put them on that computer so you can share them.” I spent most of a day scanning family photos, and reliving memories of silliness, laughter, shenanigans and life in general.
There’s a Polaroid photo of me wearing my dad’s flannel shirt that was forbidden to his daughters — he wanted to keep this one — and laughing. At the time, we left the photo in his chair with his shirt. He didn’t yell, but just shook his head.
There were photos of friends, cousins, neighbors, cousins of neighbors. Halloween costumes with plastic masks like Casper the Friendly Ghost and Holly Hobby. Trips to Kinzua Viaduct to see the changing leaves. Sled riding trails made through the front yard. Bicycle trails made through the summer grass. Older siblings on tricycles and minibikes, mostly for laughter but also because they were kind enough to fix them when things broke.
Through it all, there was one common thread — my mother. In a majority of pictures, she was holding a baby, one of hers, or her grandchildren, or a friend’s baby, or whatever. She would be in her rocking chair, a child playing at her feet, or sitting on her lap, or taking a nap on her shoulder.
Through it all, there was another common thread — love. We weren’t a demonstrative family with each other, and we weren’t the kind to talk of feelings and appreciation. Yet looking at those photos, even when the exasperation is apparent on my mother’s face, the love is apparent.
There were plenty of photos of Christmases and birthdays, showers and weddings and parties and picnics. Mom cooking a turkey, Mom making a cake, Mom sitting back with a smile watching people unwrap presents.
And still at the house is a box containing small, inexpensive toys — emergency gifts, she’d call them. For anyone who came with a friend, or a neighbor who dropped by or whatever. A scarf, some mittens, a candle, something decorative to let people know that not only were others welcome at her home, but she’d thought enough ahead so there would be something to share as well.
My mother never had much, financially. Yet she was the richest person I have ever known.
There’s so much I could say, so many words tumbling in my head and in my heart, about the impact she had on me and on so many others.
I guess I will end with this: Thank you, God, for giving me such a role model, such a strong woman, such a guiding hand through life.
Rest in peace, Mom. You deserve it.
(Marcie Schellhammer is the Era’s assistant managing editor. She can be reached at marcie@bradfordera.com.)
